This nightmare drama
was
remade much better in the 1951 version that starred
Ethel Barrymore.
It's directed by George B. Seitz ("Kit Carson"/"Andy
Hardy's Blonde
Trouble"/"A
Yank on the Burma Road") in a way that is implausible,
as we're asked
to believe a proper English lady would ask a strange
homeless beggar
into her home at midnight--especially when it's quite
apparent he's up
to no good. Bernard Schubert writes the screenplay
that was based on an
Edward Chodorov play from a Hugh
Walpole story.

On
Christmas Eve, Mary Herries (Aline
MacMahon), a generous old maid, war widow, foolishly
invites an
impoverished sidewalk artist Henry Abbott (Basil
Rathbone) into her
palatial London townhouse for tea.He turns out to be a
ruthless con artist
whose interested in stealing her valuable art
collection that includes
paintings by El Greco and Whistler, as the next
morning he returns with
his supposed wife Ada (Justine
Chase) and
child.By
wifey feigning an illness, they manage
to occupy Mary's apartment by using her good nature to
get her to agree
to keep her in the apartment until she recovers. If
you believe that, I
can probably sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.

Unable to get rid of
her
intruding guests, Mary tells them she's closing down
the house for a
year and traveling to America. She writes a letter to
her younger
married sister Lucy (Doris Lloyd) telling her this. But
the Abbotts
refuse
to leave, and together with the other squatters--the
Edwardses (Dudley Digges &Eily
Malyon) and their
ill-behaved teenage daughter Aggie (Barbara Shields),
and a doctor (Murray
Kinnell ), they scheme to sell off
Mary's art
collection through a Paris art dealer (Gustave Roubet).
Things get
violent when the suspicious live-in maid (Nola Luxford) won't
leave and
the doctor kills her. They keep Mary at gunpoint as
a hostage, and the
pathetic Mary seems doomed (it was hard to feel
sorry for such a
bleeding heart doofus!). Fortunately her niece Phyllis (Mary
Carlisle)
and soon-to-be American nephew-in-law Peter Santard
(Frank Albertson)
pay her a visit and are not satisfied with Henry's
explanations why
they can't see Mary--especially later when Peter finds
no evidence that
Mary got a passport or took a ship to America. Unable
to get a search
warrant for Mary's house by a rigid constable, the
persistent Peter
puts up such a big stink at the police station that
finally a higher-up
at the station orders a police raid on the house just
in the nick of
time before they cleaned her out and maybe kill her.